All posts tagged Infant Formula

China is trying to close the breast-milk gap. Globally, nearly 40% of infants younger than six months are exclusively breast-fed, as recommended by the World Health Organization. In China that figure is around one-third, according to the government. Now, faced with low rates of breast-feeding, Beijing is considering a ban on advertisements for infant milk formula. China Real Time hit the streets in the capital to hear how ordinary residents feel about formula, their own habits for feeding their children and whether such a ban makes sense. Read More »

Beijing has intervened aggressively in currency trading lately to blunt a rise in the yuan’s value, a signal of continued caution in liberalizing foreign-exchange policy; Pakistan is acquiring two large nuclear power reactors from longtime ally China, officials said, in a $9.1 billion deal that has raised concern in Washington that Beijing is overstepping international rules on transferring nuclear technology; Danone’s baby-food arm is overhauling its infant formula business in China following state media allegations that it paid hospital staff to use its products and boost sales. Read More »

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key plans to visit China to apologize to parents for an infant formula scare caused by the country’s dairy giant Fonterra Cooperative Group.

Mr. Key said that the New Zealand government would announce next week its own inquiry into how three batches of whey protein concentrate came to be contaminated and exported. Once he has some answers, Mr. Key said, he would be traveling to China. Read More »

Hong Kong is a city festooned with wall-to-wall milk-formula ads, with demand so high that the government recently had to slap a quota on purchases to keep from running out.

But behind the formula frenzy, official statistics show, the number of women breastfeeding their children is also quietly on the rise as the city tries everything from comic books to proposing a new voluntary code regulating milk-formula advertisements to encourage mothers to breastfeed. Read More »

A Chinese woman and her husband have been ordered to visit the woman’s elderly mother at least once every two months, and during at least two public holidays every year, in the first application of a new law that requires Chinese people to “regularly” visit their parents; tensions flared up again Wednesday between Japan and China, with Tokyo protesting Beijing’s construction of a natural gas drilling rig in contested waters, and China’s foreign ministry decrying Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s refusal to say whether he believed Japan had really ever invaded its larger neighbor; Nestlé is cutting the prices of some infant nutrition products in China, a move that follows a Beijing investigation into possible price fixing and anti-monopoly violations by foreign companies. Read More »

China is investigating foreign makers of baby formula, shining a light on the country’s scandal-plagued industry and a demand for overseas goods that has affected parents from Australia to the U.K; China has made some progress in its efforts to improve diplomatic ties at high-level Asian meetings here, but it didn’t appear to succeed much in swaying its petulant protégé North Korea from backing off its nuclear ambitions. Read More »

Got milk formula? If you can’t find any in your local supermarket, Hong Kong’s government is telling parents, ‘just give us a call.’

Over the weekend, the government began manning a temporary 24-hour hotline helping parents order milk formula, which has nearly disappeared off shelves in some areas thanks to the crush of mainland Chinese shoppers preparing for Chinese Lunar New Year. In its first two days of operation, it received more than 3,800 calls, Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wing-Man said Sunday. Read More »

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